


What We Keep

by anextraordinarymuse (December_Daughter)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 10:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19061041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/December_Daughter/pseuds/anextraordinarymuse
Summary: "Melinda May stands in Debrief with a neutral expression and an unexpected Communications partner, and her life changes forever.She has no idea."A brief trip through some of the most pivotal moments of Melinda May's life in relation to Phil Coulson.





	What We Keep

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this forever ago and then completely forgot about it. It mostly follows canon and I think at the time I was writing it I might have wanted to take it somewhere - expand on it maybe - but I didn't keep any notes for it and I have no idea now where I meant for it to go. Instead, I've decided to let it stand how and where it does and share it as is.

Melinda May stands in Debrief with a neutral expression and an unexpected Communications partner, and her life changes forever.

 

She has no idea.

* * *

 

Phillip Coulson is not incompetent, but he’s not a Specialist. His mind works like a machine and thinks through scenarios that Melinda doesn’t even consider, but his reflexes aren’t as fast. He’s not the partner she expected, but she knows before their first mission is over that he’s a good one.

 

He’s a good everything, she’ll soon learn.

 

Melinda is sentimental. Not overly so, and not always in the expected ways, but she is nevertheless. She’s a rational creature, and logical, and it’s these traits that temper her softer ones. She’s free with her heart; it’s not in her nature to be careless.

 

Phil’s heart is so big and open that it makes hers seem like Fort Knox by comparison. They’ve known each other a week – granted, it’s a week of stake outs, which May hates – and she discovers that he’s noticed and memorized how she takes her tea when he brings her a disposable cup of steaming Oolong.

 

Oolong isn’t a normal staple at gas stations. 

 

He doesn’t draw any attention to it or himself, doesn’t brag or seek her approval for the gesture. He just hands her the cup and starts talking like she won’t notice. He likes to talk.

 

May notices and thinks he’s trying too hard.

 

Their target turns out to be a bigger threat to herself than to them. Phil does what Melinda is learning he does best: he talks. He talks to her like he knows her, like he understands; Melinda can pick out the tidbits he’s read in the woman’s profile, but the rest of it has to be fluff. The target responds, though. She listens to Coulson like he’s a preacher and she’s desperate to learn the Gospel. May keeps her weapon trained on the other woman. Phil just keeps talking and steps closer, and closer, until he has the woman’s gun in one hand and the sobbing woman in the other.

 

He holds her and says things that May can’t hear. She’s not sure she knows what’s just happened.

 

Throughout it all, Coulson keeps his head. He’s calm and level-headed at every turn. His only reaction to having a gun pulled on him is to widen his eyes and hold up empty hands. He barely acknowledges May’s presence at all.

 

So, it’s understandable that she doesn’t immediately realize that his other response to having a weapon drawn on him had gone unnoticed until they’re standing outside the building and watching their target being loaded into a S.H.I.E.L.D ambulance.

 

“That was brave,” May tells him.

 

Phil’s arms are crossed over his chest and he turns slightly to look at her. It’s well into the night, and the shadows make it hard to read his expression. “What was?”

 

“Drawing her attention like that. She stopped seeing me the second you started talking.”

 

Coulson smiles. He’s a handsome man, unassuming and a bit short and nerdy, and Melinda wonders for the first time how many people dismiss him as someone wholly unremarkable. She wonders how often he uses their ignorance to his advantage.

 

“I think you give me too much credit, Agent May. I just like to talk.”

 

He steps off the porch and heads for the surveillance van they’ve been camped out in all week, and May thinks that she hasn’t given him enough credit.

 

Until now.

 

They go back to Command and debrief their Supervising Officer. Coulson relates the whole thing with detachment and a few witty remarks peppered in, and completely glosses over his own part in the whole thing.

 

“How did you bring her in?” Agent Hayes asks curiously. “Our intel warned of mental instability and extreme unpredictably, yet here you are, unharmed.”

 

“Agent May and I make a better team than anticipated,” is all Coulson says.

 

“Better than who anticipated?” Hayes digs.

 

And for a man who likes to talk, Coulson does an admirable job of shutting up. Unperturbed, Hayes congratulates and dismisses them. He’s technically Coulson’s S.O and not Melinda’s, since she doesn’t fall within the Communications chain of command, but he promises them both that their success will only bring them good things down the pipeline.

 

Coulson is faster at recognizing the dismissal and leads them out the door. His professionalism drops a bit once they’re out of the office and he gives her that smile that Melinda has somehow come to expect in their short time as partners.

 

“Well,” Phil says as he extends a hand for her to shake, “it was a pleasure working with you, Agent May. Hope to do it again sometime.”

 

“Without the surveillance,” May adds jokingly. She smiles and drops his hand.

 

“The surveillance, or the history lessons?” He has a great sense of humor and he’s not afraid to laugh at himself, which Melinda genuinely enjoys.

 

Melinda shrugs. “History’s not so bad.”

 

Phil chuckles. “Good to know.”

 

Just like that he’s walking away, and Melinda can’t help herself. She has to ask. “Coulson?” He stops and half-turns to look back at her. “How did you know? About the tea?”

 

His smile is brighter this time, the lines around his mouth and eyes deeper. “Tea?” he repeats with a quick crease of his brow.

 

Then, he disappears into the hustle and bustle of the Triskelion and leaves May without an answer.

 

May decides that he can’t be trying too hard, because he’s not trying at all – it’s just who he is.

 

She goes on with her life. Her work takes her everywhere, and she thrives on the constant movement as much as it wears on her. Melinda had become an agent to make a difference, and she’s never more certain of herself and her place in the world than when she’s working. Her missions are mostly solo operations – Specialists are known for working well on their own and being more effective that way – but she does have a few assigned to her that require working with a partner. One even requires a team of six; Melinda isn’t a fan of that one. Too many fingers in the pie, as her dad likes to say.

 

She’s paired up with two other Specialists and another Communications agent over three separate missions. Melinda has always preferred working with her counterparts because they can be trusted to both hold their own and watch her back. She doesn’t have to worry whether or not her fellow Specialist is going to get themselves shot like she does with the other agents.

 

None of them are like Phillip Coulson. The Communications agent is quiet, like Melinda, and when he does speak it’s only to relay some bit of information that pertains to the mission. May would bet a month’s salary that he doesn’t remember her first name.

 

The Specialists aren’t any better. One talks so much that May dreams about sewing his mouth shut; the other is a sweet woman that seems so wildly out of place in their violent lifestyle that May has a hard time taking her seriously.

 

All three prove themselves to be effective agents in their own way, and the two Specialists do a decent job of simultaneously taking care of themselves and being team players, so all in all May considers them successful enough pairings. The missions are accomplished and that’s really all that matters at the end of the day.

 

The team operation is a functional nightmare. Someone in Command had gotten it into their heads that they needed more cooperation across the specialties and thought the best way to foster that was to send three Specialists and three Communications agents into the field on a mission.

 

May swears that if she ever gets wind of who it was that thought that, she’ll express her displeasure with more than words.

 

That mission doesn’t go well. They end up failing their objective because no one can agree or take direction. Melinda doesn’t take failure well, especially in the field, but the one upside is that no one died.

 

She’s giving serious thought to killing one or more of them, though, so maybe she shouldn’t count those chickens yet.

 

The six of them get an upbraiding like Melinda hasn’t had since her time as a cadet. It’s deserved, but that only makes her hate it more. She keeps her mouth shut until she’s asked for her input. She’s direct and doesn’t mince words – it doesn’t make her any friends. She doesn’t care.

 

When they’re dismissed, Melinda is the last of the six to leave. She’s hoping the glare on her face will deter any of them from trying to talk to her. Behind her, a phone starts ringing and her S.O answers it with a gruff, “Dale.”

 

“Disaster?” the man on the other line asks.

 

Melinda doesn’t want to eavesdrop, but he’s the one who made the mistake of putting it on speakerphone before his office was empty. She slows her pace and hopes he’s not paying attention.

 

“That’s putting it lightly,” her S.O replies. “I don’t think it can be done, Bob. Specs guys can hardly work with each other, let alone Comms.”

 

“Maybe you just have to find the right combination,” the other man says, and if Melinda had to guess she’d say it’s Agent Hayes. She’s heard that voice before.

 

Melinda leaves before she can hear anything else. No one is waiting to ambush her outside, so that’s a plus. In fact, the hallway is emptier than she expects it to be. A quick glance at the nearest clock tells her that they were getting their asses chewed for well over an hour, and that technically the work day is over. People have already started to head home, or wherever it is they go, and Melinda sighs.

 

Her day has been a total bust.

 

May is at home when she allows herself to wonder what it is that sets Agent Coulson apart from the others. He’d talked a lot during their mission, yes, but May had never found it grating. In fact, he had a way of speaking that made her pay attention despite herself (and her general ambivalence for history). He’d made her feel noticed without making her feel on display, and he’d done it so subtly that she hadn’t noticed it at first.

 

He’d managed to watch her back by drawing attention to himself and apprehended their target without throwing a single punch.

 

May’s never known anyone who could do all of those things and do them well.

 

Maybe their mission would have succeeded if Coulson had been there. If anything, he might have talked them all into cooperating.

 

As fate would have it, she’s paired with Coulson again a few weeks later. Their second mission is a success overall, but Coulson’s talking is no help this time around. In fact, it almost gets them into more trouble. May thinks she’s going to have a hard time keeping them both alive when they have to fight their way out; Coulson has a mind for strategy, which she’s forgotten under the circumstances.

 

He’s the one who figures out how to get them out and still get the job done. May gets a broken arm in the process of acting as the muscle. She insists that Phil keep going with the intel they were sent to retrieve and that she’ll catch up, but he refuses. He can fight, and he does; May makes a mental checkmark in the “will watch my back” box and vows to yell at him about it later.

 

“So,” Phil says after they’ve given their mission report, “looks like you’re stuck with me, partner.”

 

Hayes and Dale had informed them of the change during their debriefing. Apparently, their successes had not only been noticed, but banked on.

 

May glares at him. “Then remember this: when I say I’ll handle it, I mean it.”

 

“Noted,” Coulson replies easily.

 

Their partnership turns out to be the most important of Melinda’s life, and though they’re separated several times in the interest of the job, they always end up together again before long. They’re a constant. Melinda acknowledges early on that Phil has earned her trust and loyalty in a way that no one else has managed, and that where he goes she does as well.

 

She says yes to Andrew when he proposes and loves their life together – can’t wait to have a family – but that underlying truth doesn’t change.

 

Then she runs into a building in Bahrain, and nothing is the same.

 

Melinda divorces Andrew, and leaves Phil alone in the field, and gives up her hope of being a mom one day.

 

When Phil Coulson dies her life changes – again.

 

* * *

 

Melinda accepts that she loves him in the empty places where he used to be.

 

Nick Fury comes to break the news to her himself. He explains at a surface level how he died and reassures her that his death wasn’t in vain. Coulson’s death served a greater purpose, the Director says, and brought together a team just in time to save the world.   


Melinda stares right through him. She hears his words, but she isn’t listening. She doesn’t care what his death accomplished. Melinda can’t think of a single thing that’s worth this price – worth Coulson – and that includes the rest of the world.

 

She just stands there, ever the silent and formidable Agent May, until Fury realizes that whatever message he’s prepared is inadequate. When he dismisses her, it comes with a week of mandatory leave. “Time to grieve,” Fury calls it, but Melinda knows a week couldn’t possibly be enough.

 

May goes straight to Coulson’s apartment. He’d given her a key years ago and she’s been there enough to know the way by heart. She’d stopped coming around as much when things had gotten serious with Andrew. Being in his personal space, especially alone with him in said personal space, had toed the lines of their carefully enforced boundaries.

 

They’ve never been just partners.

 

Now they’ll never be anything else.

 

Melinda had dealt with the events of Bahrain by turning herself off. Everything she’d been before had just stopped because it was the only way she could think to keep going.

 

Losing Phil isn’t like Bahrain. Her shock manifests itself in a similar way, though: she’s silent, on auto pilot, until she steps foot in his apartment. Everything is where he left it, right down to the stack of mail haphazardly tossed onto the kitchen counter. Melinda knows that if she were to check she’d find a box of her favorite tea in the cupboard above his coffee pot.

 

She doesn’t.

 

Instead, she closes the door and finds her way into his bedroom in the dark. Melinda drops her jacket on the floor, toes off her shoes, and curls up on his bed. Her eyes are adjusting to the darkness, so she can discern the outline of the picture on the wall across from her. She stares at it without seeing.

 

Melinda cries onto Phil’s pillow. She doesn’t sob. Her breathing gets heavier and the tears stream over her nose onto the pillow, but she doesn’t sob. The sound is stuck somewhere between her heart and her throat – if it ever gets out Melinda thinks it’ll be so much more than a sob.

 

Maria Hill calls her two days later with the funeral information. Melinda is still in Phil’s apartment. She’s given herself leave to feel everything for as long as she’s here, because she knows when she steps foot out of Phil’s apartment she’ll never come back.

 

Melinda takes one of Phil’s t-shirts with her when she goes.

 

The funeral is a study in torture. Melinda doesn’t want to be here, but she couldn’t bring herself to miss it, so here she is surrounded by people that she knows to varying degrees. Melinda stands in the back of the room and does her best not to listen to the eulogy.

 

Phil’s cellist girlfriend, Audrey, is in the front. Melinda doesn’t seek her out or approach her, but the other woman’s sobs seem to carry above everyone else’s.

 

A terrible thing happens when the service is over: the attendees split themselves into two groups, one civilian and one not. The civilian group goes to give their condolences to Audrey, but the others – fellow S.H.I.E.L.D agents who know who Melinda May is, and who she was to Coulson – come to give her their condolences.

 

Melinda’s grief has been hardening into anger over the last forty-eight hours, but it solidifies now like concrete poured over her heart. The sobs that have yet to escape are about to turn into something worse and claw their way out of her, because she can’t do this. She can’t listen to the litany of “I’m sorry for your loss” and stare these people in the face without wanting to scream at them that their condolences mean nothing.

 

Melinda can’t look them in the face without knowing that Philip Coulson is a price she never would have paid, and that he’d be disappointed in her for that.

 

“What we do is important,” he’d told her once. “These people need us; the world needs us. Keeping them safe is worth the cost, worth any cost.”

 

Phil had lied.

 

Maria picks up on May’s impending explosion – or implosion – and secrets her out the side door before anyone else can approach. Outside, the sun is shining, and an easy wind plays with the loose ends of her hair.

 

If I’d been there, Melinda thinks, I could have done something. He wouldn’t have been alone, he would have …

 

She derails that train of thought before it can go any further. Melinda knows that the only thing down that path is insanity, because if she lets herself go down that hole now she’ll never climb back out.

 

Melinda isn’t expecting the three people that are standing outside a limo parked in front of the church. She recognizes Tony Stark and Pepper Potts from the news, and the sight of the other man stops Melinda in her tracks. She feels like she’s been gut punched.

 

As a unit the three people approach. “Melinda May, I presume?” Steve Rogers says when he’s close enough to be heard.

 

Melinda shakes the hand he offers without thought. Phil’s lifetime hero is here, and hundreds of memories of Phil talking about Captain America clamor for attention in May’s brain.

 

Tony and Pepper shake her hand and introduce themselves as well, and Melinda might like them under different circumstances; right now, the only thing she can think is that they were blessed to be in Phil’s presence, and not the other way around. They may be superheroes – part of the Avengers – but they’re no Philip Coulson.

 

She manages to bear their kindness and condolences – later she’ll appreciate the gesture, when she’s not as raw – but it hurts to be in their presence. May’s anger simmers beneath her skin. She wants to demand to know why no one was there to watch his back, and what kind of heroes they are that they could let a man like Phil die.

 

It’s Steve that triggers the explosion. “He was a good man.”

 

Phil would have been thrilled to hear himself so labeled by his idol, but it only infuriates Melinda. She’s heard something to that effect all day: he was a good agent, a good man, a good friend …

 

“No, he wasn’t,” May bites out. “He was better than good. He was a hero – a real hero, without a fancy suit or a miracle drug.”

 

“You’re right,” Steve agrees easily.

 

“May,” Maria cautions softly.

 

“I’m done,” May hisses, and she doesn’t just mean with the funeral.

 

When she leaves she doesn’t return to Phil’s apartment. She goes home and punches her hands almost bloody on a punching bag; after she’s showered and clean she drafts her resignation from S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

Andrew calls, but she doesn’t answer. She can’t handle another condolence, especially if it’s from her ex-husband.

 

When Fury calls, Melinda answers the phone with an emphatic, “I quit.”

 

“You can’t quit,” Fury says. “S.H.I.E.L.D needs you, Agent May.”

 

“There is no S.H.I.E.L.D without Coulson,” Melinda replies.

 

“I agree. That’s why I need your help.”

 

Melinda is wary, but her heart is bruised and looking for a sliver of anything light or hopeful to cling to; she’s drowning and working hard to keep the air in her lungs.

 

“Help with what?”

  

* * *

  

When Phil Coulson dies – again – her life has already been changed.

 

They were given a second chance, and May has been through enough scrapes, with Coulson and without, to know and appreciate how lucky they were to get one. They’d made new memories; created a team that they nurtured into a family. Well, Phil had done that mostly. He’d always been so good at things like that.

 

Melinda misses him. She will miss him every day for the rest of her life. She wakes up without him now and the absence pains her, but she struggles through. She doesn’t have him, but she has a beach in Tahiti; she has a lifetime of memories and marks and imprints, the proof of Phil Coulson’s life and love pressed into the world around her.

 

May has never been the wisest person, or the most comfortable with sharing what Phil would have called “deep wisdom”, but when she finds Jemma and Daisy crying over the things they’ve so recently lost May feels like the words she offers are something he would have said.

 

“Life isn’t about what we lose,” May says gently. She can’t smile at the moment, but she tries to be warm and comforting. “It’s about what we keep.”

 

And Phil Coulson will always be hers.


End file.
